A brush fire in the Verdugo Mountains north of Los Angeles grew to 5,000 acres on Saturday morning, threatening homes and keeping the 210 Freeway closed.

Hundreds of firefighters battled the blaze overnight and into the morning, and at one point the flames were spreading in four directions at once amid intense heat and erratic winds. One home has burned, but no injuries have been reported, officials said Saturday.

Those firefighters will face another day of triple-digit heat in inland areas of Southern California as a heat wave that has gripped the state continues. The National Weather Service said temperatures could reach 110-115 degrees in the hottest areas, and hillside areas could experience more of the shifting winds that helped fuel what has been dubbed the La Tuna fire.

Eric Garcetti.

Content marketing today, needs visual elements for it to garner interest and generate engagement. With Facebook driving content engagement through videos, visual content has found a new avenue that content marketers can explore to the hilt.

For a content marketing strategy to succeed, it must offer consumers what they are looking for, when they want it, and how they want it. Content interactions are now taking place through smartphones and tablets, and as the cost of video digital technologies goes down, the possibilities of interactions and engagement for even small business marketers through video are infinite.

Growth of video content

Incorporating video into your content marketing strategy is a must, as these statistics show:

• By 2019, 80% of all web traffic would be driven by video.
• Landing pages with embedded video on them lead to 80% increased conversion rate.
• The click-through rates of marketing emails go up by a whopping 300% when a video is added to them.
• Purchasing decisions of 90% of customers revolve around product videos.
• After watching a product video online, 64% of customers are likely to buy that product.
• YouTube reports that every year, consumption of video on mobile is growing by 100%.
• Video content is currently used by 87% of online marketers for their digital marketing strategies.
• One-third of the time spent online by people is on viewing videos.
• 59% decision-makers of companies prefer watching a video over reading a blog post or an article.
• 35% of online ad spending is accounted for by video ads.

As a marketer, ignoring the above numbers would mean rendering all your content marketing initiatives void.

Advantages of video content

Improving brand recall

The video makes it easier for customers to remember the content, and 80% of customers recollect a video they have watched over the course of a month. If customers remember your video content, it means they remember your brand as well, which further results in more leads and sales. With customers willing to share a video they liked, the online presence and reach of your brand also get enhanced.

Make sure that your videos are in sync with your business needs and brand strategy. This makes customers remember your video for longer. Sticking to the same voices, logos, and colors used in your articles or blogs for your video content as well goes a long way. Even though videos work differently from text-based content, a specific recall of your brand’s format and style is essential in your online videos.

Better SEO optimization

Relevant, high-quality video content leads to significant improvement in the SEO of your site with more homepage visitors. 65% decision-makers in businesses visit your website after they have watched your video, while 39% get in touch with a vendor after watching a branded video. When you add videos to content offerings, website, and landing pages, it becomes easier for you to increase click-through rates and the SEO value of your company.

Cross-device performance

The advantage of video content over other formats is it doesn’t need to be device-responsive. If the content format cannot adapt to a browser or device, conversion rates, and traffic dip. Video content can perform across smartphones or desktops, and their wider reach and user-friendly format will ensure better conversion rates.

Enhanced brand messaging

The addition of video to a brand’s digital strategies offers great opportunities to elevate your messaging and build a persona for your company. Branding ideas and designs render well in videos and with advanced features like AR/VR now coming up in video marketing tools, it’s easier to create differentiated brand identities for easy recall by customers.

Video content creates better engagement

Estimates suggest that 92% of people share a video once they see it. Also, a video is shared 1200% more than text and links put together. A video post engages 60% of viewers more than a text-based post. When your videos go viral, you can engage with a new, wider spectrum of audiences and extend your brand resonance.

Handy production tips to get your video content right

The success of an effective video marketing content often lies in the backend production practices followed before the video even reaches the audience and is viewed. Ensuring the below checklist of production essentials is adhered to while incorporating video into your content strategy can help for a better video output:

• Clearly, define your audience
• Get complete clarity on the message you want to deliver
• Plan and fix your budget
• Always have a script in place and keep revising it until the messaging is accurate
• Ensure your video has greetings and a warm (or cool) sign off
• Average human attention span is 8.5 seconds, so get to the point before that
• Be clear and wise on the duration of your video
• Stay real, original, and transparent with your video content
• Storyboards and shot lists always help in saving time
• A production schedule is a must-have
• Estimate time with upper limit considerations
• Decide early whether you want to shoot on-location or in studio
• Visit the locations beforehand and not on the day of the shoot
• List down your equipment requirements after considering your inventory equipment
• The best company representatives need to be involved
• Keep your call sheet handy
• Imbibe a team spirit so that your entire production unit feels like one team

The above will ensure your team has a seamless production experience, which will clearly reflect on the quality of video content that’s put out.

How to incorporate video into your marketing in a structured way

Audience or consumption-based funneling can give great direction to structure your video marketing strategy to fit well into your marketing campaigns. Brand films, educational videos, documentaries, explainer animations, and videos with entertainment elements should be aligned with the top of the funnel audiences. The middle of funnel audience videos would include product, culture, and case study videos. And, since the bottom of the funnel videos has a narrowed down audience, FAQ and instructional videos should be aligned for their consumption.

The above structuring not only delivers the relevant video content to the right audience, but it also allows you in strategic targeting. While an instructional video has higher chances of consumption from a key decision-maker, an entertaining video is likely to be viewed across demographics. You can, therefore, segment the audience. The former can be a potential buyer but the latter can be your ticket to increase brand awareness and recall.

Videos in landing pages and emails

Having a video embedded in an email or landing page improves engagement drastically. Marketing teams can either have an internal team to manage their email and landing page videos or opt for SaaS vendors or third-party service providers if they have budgets and the quantum of deliverables justifies the investment. Most platforms have similar offerings and are quite user-friendly, and marketing teams can choose based on their requirements and budget allocations.

It’s quite simple to add video to emails and landing pages via YouTube or embed your own videos using a URL. There are settings within various software that allow you to auto-play and edit videos within the tool. Marketers need to take care that no major edits are made in the videos after it has reached or has been viewed by a large audience. This is where you should patiently wait till the next campaign, and make changes in terms of any mistakes or misalignments that occurred in the content of your previous video marketing campaign.

Leveraging the immense possibilities

Owing to its built-in value, simple accessibility, and viral nature, video marketing is an outstanding way to increase your brand’s visibility. Video marketing is a truly incredible way to develop and deliver content that is highly-personalized and impacts audiences in real time. Videos also have the power to evoke strong emotions, and they can result in improved sales and brand association. There are no brownie points for guessing that brands can enjoy substantial online attention through video content that is easy to interact with, accessible, and rich in information.

The real world has enough examples of brands and marketers, who have increased the ROI on their campaigns using video marketing. Gamification of video content is also a great way to boost engagement. Few takeaways from successful video campaigns include ensuring that your video has elegance, appeal and the ability to get the attention of viewers and keep them engaged. Knowing that the emotional content of your videos is what will draw customers or buyers and ensure the feel-good within video content is how you can fashion an apt video marketing strategy.

To learn more about ‘How to Make Great Videos and Incorporate Them into your Marketing Campaigns’ hear speaker Stacy Adams, Head of Marketing at GoAnimate at her session during Content Marketing World Forum on September 6 at 12:20 pm at Cleveland, Ohio Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland. The session will cover why it’s critical for marketers to make their content resonate in a sea of messages competing for the attention of your prospects and customers, as experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 advertising messages each day. Using video as part of your content strategy is critical in arresting attention and engaging your audience. And, it’s easier and more cost-effective than you think. In this session, you will learn how to easily create videos that drive campaign results and focus on:

• Key production elements to consider.
• Best practices for incorporating video into your marketing.
• How to add video to email and landing page editor

Content Marketing World 2017
Where: Cleveland, OH, USA
When: September 5-8
Register Today: http://bit.ly/MTA_CMW

Content Marketing World is the one event where you can learn and network with the best and the brightest in the content marketing industry. You’ll leave with all the materials you need to take a content marketing strategy back to your team-and-to implement a content marketing plan that will grow your business and inspire your audience.

We offer more than 150 sessions presented by the leading brand marketers from around the world covering strategy, integration, measurement, and more new ideas that you can shake an orange stick at. 

Use code MARTECHADVISOR to save an extra $100 on registration.To see what #CMWorld is all about, check out this video: https://youtu.be/AgRee6sqags

Look, data is everything. We could argue the merits of many different factors that affect business decisions and your your business model, but at the end of the day data tells the true story about what is going on. It doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t care about your personal feelings, it just is. 

The point of that soapbox stand above is that when a company that focuses on data (or has mass amounts available) releases a study or infographic that compiles their data into something easily digestible, it’s never a bad idea to take five minutes to look it over and see what knowledge can be gleaned. Take two of the studies discussed below by Egnyte and HubSpot, for example, where they break down data storage methods and how video is changing the way we consume information – both at home and in the office. What might seem like a boring, maybe even unnecessary, study on the surface actually can give valuable insights into storage expenses, preferred devices (which can increase views), and a multitude of other factors.

Ok, let’s take this bit of information for example. While there will always be merits to having some of your storage on-premise, it is still surprising to see that 41% is still in-house. One would imagine this number would continue to go down as years pass, but why is that number still so high? Is it because of technological hurdles? Maybe an uninformed management team? Sadly, the graph can’t answer that, but it shows that there is still places for improvement and the next savvy entrepreneur might be able to figure out a solution for this, that can benefit their idea and the storage solutions of companies of all sizes.

Then, there’s the more practical information in this segment – video only accounts for 1% of content, but 20% of storage. That is astounding, especially considering that HubSpot estimates that 80% of web traffic will be driven by video by 2019. Storage and optimization of video will continue to take a bigger priority in the years to come, and these numbers from the infographic really help put that into perspective.

Taken from the HubSpot infographic, this helps put into perspective the number of videos being pushed out by businesses. That number alone is startling to me, but I would imagine it is larger companies mainly, with some outliers. As mentioned above, by 2019 it is estimated that 80% of traffic will be driven by video, so, will this number go up? Is there a saturation point? If that point is much higher, companies will need to start looking at more realistic ways to store their large video files.

There is also the marketing factor to take into account, especially with the HubSpot infographic. (Egnyte discusses usage of devices in their study, as well, but it is more of a look into operating systems which doesn’t have as much effect with this piece). Business related videos are viewed 86% of the time on desktop, whereas time spent on social media is done predominately on mobile (80%). So, you can use this information to better understand your target audience and where you should put your focus into advertising for your video marketing.

And that helps bring it back full circle. Data. By looking at these two studies we can see that it might not be as simple as just “Let’s create more video content,” because while it might drive traffic, it is sitting there taking up valuable (and sometimes expensive) space. Add to the fact that we’re quickly able to correlate business views in relation to business devices used and we can start making better decisions when we start our next marketing campaign – all because of data and the companies that compile it.

This post is part of our contributor series. The views expressed are the author’s own and not necessarily shared by TNW.

Read next:

The Surface Laptop’s i7 configurations now come in pretty colors too

House Republicans who represent districts with large Hispanic populations are battling President Trump over an Obama-era immigration program that shields certain immigrants from deportation.

The Republicans have sought to convince Trump to keep the program alive, and have also offered legislation that would essentially make into law the protections for young people brought to the United States illegally.

Trump is expected to announce his decision on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on Tuesday. It grants temporary work permits and protection from deportation to nearly 800,000 immigrants.

Most of the Republicans challenging Trump are targets of Democrats seeking to win back the House next year and represent districts that will help determine the House majority.

The lawmakers include Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who has filed amendments to an upcoming spending package to keep DACA intact, as well as GOP Reps. Dan Donovan (N.Y.), David Valadao (Calif.), Jeff Denham (Calif.), Don Bacon (Neb.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), Martha McSally (Ariz.), Scott Taylor (Va.), Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Dave ReichertDavid ReichertTime to pass the U.S. OUTDOOR Act to support American jobs and consumers Dems look to Seattle for next special election win Working together on children’s healthcare MORE (Wash.), Dan Newhouse (Wash.) and John Faso (N.Y.).

Six of these lawmakers wrote to Trump earlier this month imploring him to leave DACA in place until Congress can pass immigration reform.

And on Friday, they wrote to Speaker Paul RyanPaul RyanTrump to cut pay raises for government workers Trump and Republicans have to make the tax code great again Mnuchin: More tax details coming shortly MORE (R-Wis.) asking him to “work with us” to address the fate of DACA.

The most striking move comes from Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), who announced he will try to force a vote on his bill extending DACA work permits by starting a discharge petition — a rare move for a member of the House majority party.

Discharge petitions are normally a tool used by the minority party — unsuccessfully, in most cases. In order to force a House floor vote, discharge petitions must get at least 218 signatures.

Coffman is convinced that a decision by Trump to end DACA would motivate enough Republicans who weren’t on board before to endorse his proposal.

While he doesn’t believe President Obama’s executive action in 2012 to create DACA was constitutional, he does want to prevent people brought to the country illegally as children from being deported. And he thinks many of his GOP colleagues would agree.

“There’s a lot of folks that, you know, it’s a tough vote,” Coffman said in an interview with The Hill. “But if given the choice of having the program suspended and young people being deported who are working here and going to school here legally, albeit temporarily, I think that’s a visual that the majority of members of Congress don’t want.”

Coffman would need to get all 194 House Democrats to sign his discharge petition in addition to at least 23 GOP colleagues.

Only 12 Republicans have co-sponsored the underlying bill he introduced with Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) earlier this year, titled the Bar Removal of Individuals who Dream and Grow our Economy (BRIDGE) Act. The legislation would only extend DACA protections for three years to give Congress time to enact a permanent solution. 

“If the Democrats hold firm, I believe I’ll have enough Republican votes to pass 218,” Coffman said.

Democrats are still figuring out a strategy for how to respond if Trump rescinds DACA. A spokesman for Gutiérrez indicated he hasn’t decided whether to sign the discharge petition for the bill he introduced with Coffman, given that he ultimately prefers a longer-term solution.

Gutiérrez is considering another option of his own: whether Democrats should withhold votes for a spending bill later this month in exchange for securing DACA. House GOP leaders have consistently relied on Democratic votes in recent years to keep the government open.

Immigrant advocacy groups are also pushing for a longer-term fix to keep DACA instead of the three-year delay as outlined by the BRIDGE Act pushed by Coffman.

“We are glad that Coffman wants to force a vote on Dreamers. It’s a gutsy move. But he’s chosen the wrong vehicle. The BRIDGE Act is a temporary measure, and we want Congress to enact a permanent solution,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice. 

Sharry pointed to an alternative bill introduced by Curbelo in March that would establish a pathway for DACA recipients and other young immigrants to obtain legal status. 

Curbelo’s legislation is somewhat more stringent compared to the most recent version of the DREAM Act. Qualifying young immigrants would have to establish they came to the U.S. before the age of 16 and lived in the country continuously since at least 2012, compared to needing to enter the U.S. before the age of 18 and live here at least four years before the DREAM Act’s enactment. 

At this point, Curbelo’s bill has only 18 co-sponsors who are all Republicans.  

House GOP leaders haven’t offered support to help advance the bills offered to shield young immigrants from deportation. Ryan pledged to conservatives before taking on his current leadership post in 2015 that he would not allow a floor vote on any immigration reform bill unless a majority of Republicans supported it.

But Ryan, a supporter of immigration reform in the past, urged Trump on Friday not to end DACA. 

“I actually don’t think he should do that, and I believe that this is something Congress has to fix,” Ryan told WCLO in Janesville, Wis.

Ryan and his GOP leadership team could move as soon as next week when the House returns into session to vote on keeping the program.

Curbelo, as well as multiple Democrats, have submitted amendments to a spending package that includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security to keep DACA in place. 

Another bipartisan amendment Curbelo has filed with Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) would allow DACA recipients to work for the federal government. A version of that proposal was originally adopted in the House Appropriations Committee, but it has been stripped out ahead of floor consideration next week. 

The House Rules Committee, which serves as an arm of GOP leaders, will meet next week to decide whether any of the amendments to prevent the Trump administration from rescinding DACA can get floor votes. 

Even if the Rules Committee granted those amendments votes, precedent suggests that they would fail. In 2015, all but 26 Republicans voted for an amendment to a Department of Homeland Security spending bill that would end DACA. A similar vote in August 2014 resulted in only 11 GOP defections.

Many of the Republicans pushing to save DACA have constituencies demanding action, and some have seen their positions evolve with changing districts.

Coffman, for example, co-sponsored a bill ending birthright citizenship and voted against the DREAM Act in 2010.

Since then, a round of redistricting resulted in his district having a 20 percent Hispanic population.

Coffman acknowledged that the redistricting led him to revise his stances. Meeting with immigrants in the country illegally who were now his constituents, he said, gave him a new perspective.

“It’s given me a better understanding about how realistically to deal with immigration reform to get to where I think we need to go, which is not very different from where I thought we needed to go from before 2013,” Coffman said. “I think we ought to be very tough on illegal immigration, but also understand that we need a transition period to get there.”

He offered an example of meeting a young constituent “who graduated at the top of her class from a local high school here” — but was unable attend the Naval Academy because she was brought to the country illegally as a child.

“There’s a special place in my heart for a lot of the young people that I’ve met that were taken here as children that I didn’t meet before,” Coffman said. “Her parents took her illegally to this country when she was just a year old from Mexico. She’d never been to Mexico, that she can remember. She grew up here, she went to school here, I think she ought to be able to stay here.”

Tropical Storm Harvey, which destroyed thousands of homes and businesses across southeastern Texas, is now estimated to be one of the costliest disasters in American history, with damages that could exceed $100 billion.

Rebuilding efforts along the Gulf Coast, already expected to take years, will be complicated by the fact that fewer than one in five homeowners in the Houston area are insured against flood damage. Those without it could wait months, or years, to fund costly renovations themselves or receive government relief funds.

Even people with insurance are not in the clear as they will be dealing with a program that is mired in problems: The National Flood Insurance Program is nearly $25 billion in debt and will expire Sept. 30 if Congress does not extend it.

Lawmakers and experts are debating how to improve the program’s long-term financial outlook, which could include requiring more homeowners to buy flood insurance or discouraging people from rebuilding in areas that will see more storms.

Superstorm Sandy, which could not be covered through policyholders’ premiums. Today the program has $5.8 billion in borrowing authority from the U.S. Treasury.

Payments from Harvey are expected to far exceed that limit.

Harvey swept through a swath of southeast Texas, triggering disaster declarations in 19 counties.

A draft letter from President Donald Trump justifying the firing of FBI Director James Comey and now reported to be in the hands of Special Counsel Robert Mueller was substantially watered down before Trump dismissed Comey in May, according to people familiar with the events.

The decision to fire Comey was made by the president the weekend before the firing as he huddled at his country club in Bedminster, N.J., with his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and top policy adviser Stephen Miller, the people said.

Story Continued Below

“It was talked and talked about,” said one Trump adviser who asked not to be named.

In the prior weeks, Trump was increasingly obsessed with Comey and concerned that he was disloyal to the administration, aides and advisers said. Those sentiments came to a boil after Comey’s May 3 Senate testimony, where the FBI chief said he was “mildly nauseous” over the idea his actions in connection with the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email account may have swayed the presidential election.

Several senior White House officials including White House counsel Don McGahn, chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon advised Trump to delay Comey’s dismissal and warned that firing him amid widespread press coverage of allegations of Russian involvement in Trump’s campaign would trigger a firestorm, the sources said.

The men were able to delay the firing for several weeks, slowing but not stopping Trump’s decision as he fumed, by warning him of the consequences. Once Trump returned from New Jersey, it was clear he wasn’t changing his mind.

Then, the White House began frantically searching for how to explain the firing. McGahn had told Trump that the firing would be “less of a big deal” if it was handled properly and delayed, one person said, describing the conversations.

“It turned out to be what everyone was afraid of,” one adviser said. “A pivotal point for his presidency, and not a good one.”

The New York Times reported Friday that Mueller has obtained a copy of the draft letter that Trump prepared over the weekend he was in New Jersey.

It’s not clear how the draft letter about Comey’s firing wound up in Mueller’s possession.

Asked whether Justice Department officials provided the letter to Mueller, Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior said: “The Department of Justice has been fully cooperating with the special counsel and will continue to do so.” He declined to elaborate.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were in contact with the White House and visited with Trump the day before Comey’s dismissal was announced on May 9.

Rosenstein and Sessions both drafted memos used to support Comey’s firing, largely on the grounds that he violated Justice Department protocols in 2016 by speaking publicly about the decision not to charge Clinton, the findings of the FBI investigation, and by usurping the role of Justice Department officials in making final decisions about the case.

While the White House initially insisted that Comey was fired for the reasons Rosenstein detailed in his memo, Trump later acknowledged in an interview that he had already decided to fire Comey before Sessions and Rosenstein visited and shared their views. The president also conceded that when he made the decision he had Comey’s role in the Russia probe in mind.

Trump’s actions and his public statements have fueled claims that he may have obstructed justice by firing Comey in order to shut down the Russia investigation.

Now, there are even stronger indications that Mueller is probing the Comey firing as part of a broader investigation into whether Trump aides or advisers colluded with Russia during the campaign or thereafter. White House aides say they expect to be interviewed by Mueller’s team about Comey’s firing.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined to comment Friday.

While Trump insisted on going forward with the firing, McGahn did manage to get him not to send the draft letter that took Comey to task in greater detail.

Instead, Trump ultimately sent the FBI chief a terse, four-paragraph missive that invoked Sessions’ and Rosenstein’s letters but did not get into detail about what Comey had done to elicit Trump’s ire.

Trump did refer to the Russia probe by asserting that Comey had assured him he wasn’t a focus of the inquiry.

“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,” Trump wrote.

Comey later acknowledged he had given Trump such assurances as far back as the transition.

White House lawyer Ty Cobb declined to discuss the letter, but said the White House was cooperating with Mueller’s inquiry.

Senior White House officials are expected to be asked about the events.

“To the extent the special prosecutor is interested in these matters, we will be fully transparent with him,” Cobb said in a statement.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders rebuffed requests Friday to explain the sequence of events surrounding Comey’s firing and to make public a copy of the draft letter

“I’m not going to get into any of that,” Sanders said. “We’re going to work with the special prosecutor as Ty said and we’ll work through that process.”